Speculation regarding the political career of Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), one of Congress’ leading defenders of the free market, is reaching a fevered pitch. Rumors are afloat that Gramm, who lost the chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee when Democrats took control of the upper chamber earlier this year, will not run for reelection in 2002 now that the presidency of Texas A&M, where he once taught economics, is vacant. This would be an untimely retirement conservatives could ill afford.

Gramm’s aides have moved to quash these rumors by pointing out that Texas’ senior senator has raised more than $1 million in recent fundraising and has $3.2 million on hand. President George W. Bush will soon hold a Dallas fundraiser for the lawmaker. To paraphrase Shakespeare, Beltway rumors are often full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is possible that this is little more than a Democratic trial balloon that will run out of air as the senator launches his reelection bid in the coming weeks.

The recently announced retirement of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) makes Gramm’s continued service in the Senate crucial. Whether Helms is replaced by a Democrat or by Elizabeth Dole, his departure moves the Senate to the left. Gramm shares Helms’ unflagging commitment to conservative principle and willingness to oppose bad legislation even when alone- and more importantly, they share an effectiveness in working on behalf of their goals that often eludes ideologues.

While Gramm is more reticent on social and cultural issues than Helms, he also lacks the North Carolinian’s troubling racial baggage from the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Gramm isn’t perfect. He has backed costly and unconstitutional boondoggles like mohair subsidies and the Supercollider. He supported the elder President Bush’s disastrous 1990 budget agreement that raised taxes. Since beginning his congressional career as a Democrat who voted to make Tip O’Neill speaker of the House, Gramm has cast some bad votes himself.

Yet as David Frum has written, "No senator of comparable intellectual power has as strong a voting record for less government, not even Jesse Helms." Gramm played a pivotal role in defeating Hillary Clinton’s health plan, becoming the first senator to announce his uncompromising opposition to it when the Clinton administration had won an endorsement of a federal role in securing universal health care from Bob Dole. He countered a whole host of bipartisan socialized medicine schemes with free-market solutions emphasizing medical savings accounts and individual choice. He emboldened other conservatives to follow suit and the Clinton plan was never even brought up for a floor vote.

While still a Democrat, Gramm was a co-sponsor of President Reagan’s tax cut in the House. He did more than many Republicans to make the Reagan tax cut a reality. He also authored the Gramm-Latta acts that contained the Reagan budget cuts.

Although the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Control Act was flawed and failed to produce a balanced budget, it was probably the main factor introducing some measure of spending restraint in the second Reagan administration. Gramm-Rudman called for automatic spending sequesters that would shut down the entire government, rather than permit its growth to be unchecked or tolerate deficit spending. While the sequesters never occurred, it helped reduce the deficit by 40 percent from 1985 to 1989 and federal spending slipped to 22.1 percent of GDP (compared to 24.4 percent in 1983). Few others showed Gramm’s resolve to get federal spending under control.

More recently, Gramm favored larger tax cuts than the original Bush proposal and championed estate-tax relief. Just as he helped pass the Reagan tax cut 20 years before, he was a leader in working for the passage of the Bush tax cut, cosponsoring it with Sen. Zell Miller (D-GA.). He is currently working for legislation to make that tax cut permanent, while Democrats are working to delay, erode or repeal it.

Gramm has been relentless in pushing the value of limited government. In Dead Right, Frum recalls the senator’s bill to delete $126 billion in housing, nutrition and health spending from the federal budget in exchange for doubling the per-child tax exemption from $2,350 to $4,700. This, as Frum noted, illustrates that the debate isn’t really about the amount spent on feeding, housing and providing medical care for children (among others in the population), but about who should be spending it and given the means to do so - families or the federal government.

On a whole host of issues - the value of free trade, welfare reform, deregulation of the financial sector- Gramm has been right and willing to act on his principles. If he were to leave the Senate, it would leave that chamber down one more key leader for conservative causes and leave the Republican conference without one of its most reliable opponents of government spending in a time when such people are indispensable.

In an era of feel-good legislation, there needs to be someone willing to act as Senator No. If Phil Gramm does not run for reelection, that position could stand vacant as other senators are either too timid or too ineffectual to play this role. Even if succeeded by a Republican, senators who want to reign in federal spending are difficult to replace.

Here is to hoping we don’t have to.

W. James Antle III

Copyright © 2001 by W. James Antle III.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission